"Why the Tea Party should like the ACLU"

I see tea partyers carrying signs saying “Protect our Constitution.” I’m all for protecting our Constitution. Need I remind the demonstrators that the 2008 election of the president and Congress was conducted according to the procedures laid out in the Constitution in 1789? The American people have accepted the results of such elections – however controversial – every time except once, in 1860, when the South seceded over slavery.

Where were the tea-party protesters when the National Security Agency, under President George W. Bush, was flouting the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution with warrantless surveillance of American citizens? Where were they when Bush was authorizing the torture of people held in secret sites abroad?